The Securities and Exchange Commission charged a Rockville, Maryland-based proxy adviser Shareholder Service for failing to protect the confidential proxy voting information of clients participating in several proxy contests. 

 

An SEC investigation found that an employee of the serve provided a proxy solicitor with nonpublic information revealing how more than 100 advisory clients were voting their ballots. In exchange for this voting information, the solicitor provided the Institutional Shareholder Services employee with tickets to sporting events and concerts, meals, and airplane tickets. The breach was conducted in part because ISS did not implement sufficient controls over employee access to confidential voting information, as the employee charged gathered said data by logging into the ISS voting website from work or home and using his personal e-mail to relay the details to the proxy solicitor. 

ISS, which is registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission as an investment advisory firm, agreed to settle the charges by a $300,000 fine and retaining an independent compliance consultant. 

 

“Proxy advisers are required to tailor their controls based on the risks of their business in order to protect the integrity of the proxy voting process,” said the Deputy Chief of the SEC Enforcement Division’s Asset Management Unit, Mrs. Jule Riewe. “The Internal controls at Institutional Shareholder Services did not adequately address the prospective misuse of confidential voting information rendered by firm employees.”

According to the agency’s orders, the breach took place from 2007 to 2012; during this time, ISS failed to enforce or establish policies and procedures to impede the misuse of material and nonpublic information rendered by ISS employees. Specifically, the business lacked adequate controls over employee access to confidential client voting information.

 

The order found that ISS violated Section 204A of the Investment Advisers Act of 1940; the SEC order censures ISS and requires the business to pay a $300,000 penalty and take in an independent compliance officer to review the firm’s supervisory and compliance procedures and policies. The officer will evaluate whether the company’s procedures are designed to ensure that its voting services business adheres with the Advisers Act regarding its treatment of client information, interactions with proxy solicitors, and the transfer of gifts.   

 

 

Source: SEC.gov

 

U.S. stocks surged today as investors digested solid economic data that appeared to put the financial and housing crises in the nation’s rearview mirror. 

 

The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed the day at a record high of 15,409, after gaining more than 100 points, or 0.7 percent. The S&P 500 also rose 0.7 percent respectively, and the NASDAQ added a solid 0.9 percent. 

 

Moreover, the yield on the 10-year Treasury note surged above 2.1 percent, which marks the highest level in more than a year. Other signs pointing to a robust recovery are reports that housing prices rose better-than-expected at a clip of 10.2 percent during the first quarter. This marks the most significant increase since 2007 and helped bolster the entire housing sector. 

 

In a separate issue, the May reading on consumer confidence hit a five-year high today and jumped far more than expected. 

 

Central banks, including the U.S. Federal Reserve, have been driving the 2013 rally by buying up government bonds to control and push down interest rates and to entice investors to purchase more stock. Central banks in Europe and Japan signaled they were prepared to keep pouring money into their respective markets to keep rates low, even as signs continue to point to a strong recovery. 

 

Some notable price movements for U.S. stocks include Netflix, which slumped after the hyped new season of Arrested Development aired over the Memorial Day Weekend. Moreover, shares of the electric car maker Telsa, which is backed by billionaire Elon Musk, surged 13 percent, as it topped $100 for the first time in the company’s history. 

 

 

Source: whitehouse.gov

 

Nike announced that it will cease making and selling products for the Livestrong Foundation at the end of this year.

 

The move to halt production of the Livestrong brand comes as no surprise, especially considering the clothing giant terminated its contract in the fall of 2012 with controversial cyclist Lance Armstrong, who was the founder and face of the Livestrong brand. 

 

Nike has been distancing itself from the notorious cyclist since the United States Anti-Doping Agency released a slew of information and reports in October outlining the extensive steroid use and doping allegations made against Armstrong when he won the Tour De France cycling events seven years in a row from 1999 to 2005. 

 

The U.S. Anti-Doping Agency banned Armstrong from competing in cycling events for life and stripped the former champion of the titles he won during his 14-year career. 

Armstrong, a cancer survivor, founded the Livestrong brand in 1997, but stepped down as chairman of the charity shortly after the October reports were released. Armstrong claimed he was removing his name from the foundation to spare “the foundation from any negative effects as a result of the stigma and controversy surrounding my career.”

Nike has been a staunch supporter of the Livestrong Foundation, which provides free resources and support services, as well as an assortment of programs to help people with cancer. Over the last decade or so, with public support from Armstrong, Nike raised over $100 million for the charity and has sold roughly 88 million of the signature Livestrong yellow wristbands. 

 

Nike announced in a statement that this year’s holiday line will be its last offered under the Livestrong name; however, the company also claimed it will continue to support the foundation by providing funds to it in a direct manner. Besides Nike, other companies, such as Radio Shack and Anheuser-Busch, also terminated their relationship with Lance Armstrong. 

 

The Livestrong Foundation announced in a statement that it is grateful to Nike for their time, creative drive, and resources it brought to the longstanding partnership.  

 

 

Source: sec.gov

 

The S.E.C. charged NASDAQ with a securities laws violation resulting from its poor decision-making during the initial public offering and secondary trading of Facebook shares. In response to the charges, NASDAQ has agreed to settle and pay a $10 million penalty, which represents the largest fine filed against the market exchange. 

In the United States, exchanges have an obligation to guarantee that their processes, systems, and contingency plans are effective and adequate to manage an IPO without disrupting the market. According to the agency’s order, despite widespread anticipation that the IPO would be among the most prolific in history with regards to the number of investors participating, a design limitation in the exchange’s platform to match IPO sell and buy orders brought significant disruption to the IPO. Following the disruption, NASDAQ then undertook a series of poor decisions that ultimately led to the rules violations. 

 

According to the agency’s order, several members of the exchange’s senior leadership team undertook a “code blue” conference call and decided not to delay the start of secondary trading in Facebook with the exception that they had righted the system error by removing lines of computer code. However, the team did not understand the root of the problem, and the market’s decision to initiate trading before understanding the problem caused a series of violations, including the exchange’s fundamental rule governing the time/price priority for executing trade orders. This problem caused in excess of 30,000 Facebook orders to remain stuck in the exchange’s system for more than two hours when said shares should have been promptly cancelled or executed. 

“The action against NASDAQ describes how poorly designed systems not only disrupted one of the most significant IPOS in history, but produced pervasive and substantial violations of our market’s fundamental rules,” said George Canellos, the Co-Director of the SEC’s Enforcement Division. 

 

Additionally, NASDAQ further violated its rules when it took a short position in Facebook in an unauthorized account. The exchange’s rules do not allow it to use an error account for any reason; NASDAQ subsequently covered the short position for a profit of roughly $10.8 million, which is also in violation of its rules. The exchange further violated its rules in a few other ways during the opening of trading following the end of the display-only period for the company and following a substantial freeze in Zynga trading. 

 

 

Source: SEC.GOV

 

Mortgage rates in the U.S. have hit their highest level in more than a year, making homes more expensive for purchases who seek to finance their new abodes. 

The rates on 30-year-fixed mortgages jumped nearly .25 percent to 3.81 percent this week, according to mortgage lending giant Freddie Mac. This is an increase of 15 percent from the record low of 3.31 percent set during November of 2012 and the highest rate since May of 2012. The 30-year rate dropped as low as 3.35 percent in early May. 

 

The rates for 15-year fixed mortgages also spiked t0 2.98 percent, representing an increase of .21 percent. 

 

Prospective home buyers unhappy with these increased rates can blame it on Ben Bernanke, the chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve. According to Keith Gumbinger, an executive with a premiere mortgage information company, “Bernanke’s comments left the impression that the central bank’s stimulus policy might start to be pulled back, perhaps as early as this September,” said Gumbinger. “This announcement influenced the spike in interest rates as investors worked quickly to adjust their positions.”

The stimulus policy, in which the Federal Reserve purchases up as much as $85 billion a month in U.S. treasuries and mortgage backed securities, has kept interest rates close to zero by providing a willing buyer for loans. If the central bank pulls the reins on their purchases, buyers will likely demand higher yields to pick up the slack, which will push interest rates up.

 

Bond yields, which are utilized to track mortgage rates, have risen even faster than mortgage rates. The 10-year Treasury is currently at 2.12 percent or .45 percentage points above its April level. 

 

As rates continue to rise, the number of loan refinancings will invariably decline. Refinancing applications dropped by 12 percent week over week, representing the largest single-week drop in 2013. That said, mortgage rates will probably have to climb much righter to have a significant impact on buyers. 

 

Mortgage rate increases over the past month have only added roughly $20 to monthly mortgage payments for every $100,000 borrowed. However, the increase in rates ultimately limits how much buyers will bid on homes, which in turn, dampens home values. 

 

 

Source: whitehouse.gov

Roughly 11 million Americans depend on federal disability payments; however, the system is on the verge of running out of money.

According to a government report, the Social Security Disability Insurance program is expected to run out of money in its trust fund sometime in 2016, years before both the Social Security and Medicaid programs. If this happens, the revenues coming into the program would only be enough to cover roughly 80 percent of the payments owed to the disabled and their families.

The trustees of Medicare and Social Security will release an update on the status of the disability program later this week. The annual report will also offer new estimates for the exhaustion of Medicare’s hospital fund, and of Social Security’s retirement fund, which is currently set to run out of funds in 2035.

Although the disability program is the smallest of the three, it will be the first program that Congress has to address. That said, there is not much agreement regarding the entitlement reform in Washington these days. Attempts to cut Medicare spending have been nothing short of futile.

The Social Security actuaries have developed two ways to bring stability to the disability program. The easiest solution and one legislators have agreed to in recent years, is to divert a larger percentage of the Social Security payroll tax to the disability program and away from the general retirement initiative.

Currently, the combined rate paid by U.S. employers and workers is 12.4 percent. The disability program’s rate is 1.8 percent, and the retirement system’s rate is an overwhelming 10.6 percent. Congress has the ability to authorize a larger share moving toward disability to 2.6 percent for two years and slowly wane this figure to 1.8 percent by 2030. This increase would allow the disability fund to remain solvent until roughly 2033; however, it would cut the retirement system’s lifespan by two years.

The other means, which is highly controversial, would be to increase the disability portion paid by employers and workers by 0.2 percent each. This increase would keep the program running for 75 years; however, there is little desire among legislators to undertake a tax increase.

There are a variety of reasons why the number of Americans collecting disability payments has skyrocketed to roughly 11 million from 8.7 million in 2007. The aging of the baby boomers is one of the primary drivers, along with more women entering the workforce. That said, many argue that Americans are taking advantage of the system, claiming it is too easy to procure benefits under the program.

Regardless of how we got here if Congress does not take action, the disabled population will have to make due with smaller payments.

Source: Congresional Budget Office

The SEC today charged a Washington-based commercial truck manufacturer for a number of accounting deficiencies that clouded the company’s financial reporting to investors during the financial crisis. The SEC alleges that PACCAR’s accounting controls included ineffective policies and procedures that kept the business from adhering to various accounting laws and rules. The company failed to report the operating results of its aftermarket business separately from its truck sales business as mandated under segment reporting rules, which are established to ensure that investors procure the same insight into a business as its primary executives.

PACCAR and one of its subsidiaries also failed to offer complete information regarding their respective loan and lease portfolios, and the company also overstated some lease and loan originations and collections and two of its foreign subsidiaries in its statement of cash flows. Both PACCAR and its subsidiary agreed to settle these charges.

“Companies are required to diligently monitor their internal accounting systems to ensure that the information presented is consistent and accurate with the relevant accounting guidance,” said Michael Dicke, the Associate Regional Director of the agency’s San Francisco Office. “The deficient procedures and controls at PACCAR caused glaring inconsistencies in its reporting and kept regulators and investors from seeing the company through the eyes of the company’s management personnel.”

According to the complaint, PACCAR is a Fortune 200 company that manufactures, designs, and distributes trucks and aftermarket parts that are sold under the Kenworth, DAF, and Peterbilt nameplates. From 2008 through 2012, PACCAR did not report the results for its parts business as a separate entity from its truck sales business. For instance, the company’s 2009 annual report showed $68 million in income prior to taxation for its truck segment; however, board materials and documents reviewed by senior executives revealed that the trucks business encountered a $474 million loss and the parts business procured a $542 million profit. By at least 2008, the company should have been reporting its aftermarket business as a separate entity in its filings, but failed to do so until the 4^th quarter of last year. 

 

Source: SEC.gov

The agency suspended trading activities of 61 empty shell businesses that are delinquent in their public filing and no longer in business based on an evaluation by the agency’s Microcap Fraud Working Group. Because microcap companies are rarely traded, once they become dormant they are susceptible to being taken over by fraudsters who falsely pump-up the stock to depict it as a healthy business and coerce investors into illegal pump and dump schemes.

In this review of microcap stocks, the SEC identified these shell companies in at least 17 states and one foreign nation. By suspending trading in these businesses, they are required to provide updated financial information to prove they are still up and running. This requirement essentially renders these businesses useless to fraudsters because they are no longer flying under the radar.

“Fraudsters crave empty shell companies that they use to conduct pump and dump schemes and procure illicit trading profits by defrauding unsuspecting investors,” said Andrew Cereseny, the Co-Director of the SEC’s Division of Enforcement. “The SEC will aggressively freeze trading in these shell companies to take away a crucial instrument of their trade and to rid our markets of fraudulent activities.”

Pump and dump schemes are common types of fraud involving these empty shell businesses. Perpetrators acting out these schemes will tout a thinly-traded microcap company through misleading and false statements regarding the company. Perpetrators then purchase the stock at a low price before driving the price higher by creating the appearance of activity and drawing investor interest. They then dump the stock for a significant profit by selling it to the market at a higher price once investors have bought into it.

“When a company ceases its filings and investors no longer have access to current information, there is no reason for that shell to remain exposed in our markets. Under this initiative, we are committed to identifying significant risks in the market and removing them to protect investors,” said Christopher Ehrman, the Coordinator of the agency’s Microcap Fraud Group.

Source: sec.gov

 

Media mogul Jeff Berwick is hoping to bring Bitcoin ATMs to major metropolitan areas throughout the world within the next couple of weeks to months. 

 

Berwick expects to put the first two Bitcoin ATMs in Cyprus and Los Angeles in the next couple of weeks and is choosing between handfuls of different retail locations in both cities. Berwick added that orders for Bitcoin ATMs are coming in by the hundreds from a variety of countries all over the world. 

 

Bitcoin is a virtual currency that was created four years ago. Since its inception, the currency has generated a considerable amount of attention over the past few weeks. The value of the digital currency has surged in the wake of the fumbled bailout and bank-run in Cyprus and worries regarding the health of government-backed paper currencies like the dollar and euro.

 

A Bitcoin ATM will work like a traditional automated teller machine; however, instead of connecting to your bank account, the software Berwick and his team developed will convert cash to Bitcoins stored in your Bitcoin wallet or provide cash based on what is stored in your personal Bitcoin account. 

 

Berwick plans to charge approximately $10,000 to ATM operators to maintain the machines; fees then will be split with said operators. Berwick expects fees to hover around 3 percent, which is slightly higher than what most Americans pay to get cash from ATM’s outside of their banking network. 

 

Thus far, Berwick has used his personal savings to develop the machines and build out the first prototype. Berwick is currently hoping to raise between $2 and $4 million in outside investments to get more ATMs in the hands of operators. 

 

Berwick claims that getting a Bitcoin machine up and running should not be much more difficult than setting up a traditional ATM. In most cases, ATM operators are required to purchase the machine, pour cash into it and maintain network connections to accounts and Bitcoin wallets.  

 

The virtual currency market is rapidly expanding and ever evolving. At this time, Bitcoin users or investors can trade in their coins for cash through a number of websites such as BitInstant and Coinbase that work directly with banks to facilitate transactions. Moreover, some vendors are now accepting the coins as real currency, including the online community Reddit and the blog hosting site WordPress.

 

That said, the financial turmoil in Cyprus was the principal catalyst for the recent Bitcoin surge; and with seemingly no end in sight to Europe’s debt crisis, further financial problems in the Eurozone are expected. “If Cyprus happens in Spain, Italy or Ireland, more people will look to Bitcoin,” claims Berwick.  

 

 

Source: AP

Ousted IRS Official Denies Intentional Targeting and Lying to Congress

 

A significant increase in workload, as oppose to deliberate targeting, led to foolish mistakes and acts of political discrimination in the IRS as cited by an inspector general’s report, the agency’s outgoing commissioner claimed today. 

 

The testimony by Steven Miller, who was forced to resign as commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service earlier this week, was presented at the first congressional hearing on the controversy that has required President Obama’s administration on the defensive. 

 

Rep. Dave Camp, the chairman of the Republican-led panel, and other GOP members sought to paint the controversy as indicative of a government gone wild, with the IRS abusing conservative organizations and other political adversaries of the administration. 

 

Democrats on the committee also expressed disdain at the political targeting of conservative groups’ tax-exempt status; however, they noted that the top IRS official responsible for conducting affairs was appointed by Republican President George W. Bush.

 

The Democrats on the committee also noted that the inspector general’s report expressed that there was no evidence of any political influence from outside the Internal Revenue Service. 

 

Miller apologized for what he described as “horrible customer service,” he also rejected any accusation that it amounted to bringing politics into the Internal Revenue Service’s work and responsibilities. 

 

According to reports, the Internal Revenue Service developed and followed a defective policy to determine whether the applicants for tax-exempt status were engaged in legitimate political activities. If so, the organizations being reviewed would be disqualified from receiving tax-exempt status. 

 

The controversy started in early 2010 and continued for more than 18 months. The report ultimately declared that the IRS used inappropriate criteria to identify the Tea Party and other conservative groups as non-exempt. The report stated that the agency found these organizations as speculative bodies for receiving tax-emptions based upon their names or political positions as oppose to indications of potential political intervention. 

 

According to the report, IRS officials failed to consult anyone beyond the agency regarding the development of additional screening criteria. President Barack Obama called the findings “outrageous” and forced Miller’s resignation, which is set to take place in early June. 

 

 

Source: whitehouse.gov